Page 25 - Arabian Studies (I)

Folklore and Folk Literature in Oman and Socotra 13
M. masher, I;L nwsher). One man I saw had been given an elaborate
pattern of brands along his ribs back and front by a makoli in an
attempt to cure him of tuberculosis. These had gone septic.
In Dhofar the Mchri name for such a person is mehesni, in Sheri
esni. Both words are active participles of the causative theme of the
root sny To see’, and presumably mean ‘one who enables some one
to sec’. It may be however that the causative is a formal aspect of the
word and that it means ‘a seer’, in the sense of one who sees and
diagnoses for a sickness.
The Mehris, like all nomads, are rather more sceptical about the
supernatural than village dwellers, but about twenty years ago there
was in any case no medical help in Dhofar except from these
folk-doctors.
‘AIT Musallam, a Mehri with whom I worked for a long time in
Trucial Oman and in London, was taken to a number of mehesnis as
a young boy. He had been stung by a hornet while gathering fruit
and had not recovered well. For six months, from that autumn till
the next spring he had a fever and swellings. His parents decided to
take him down to the town to see a mehesni. They were to pay him
five Maria Theresa dollars down, and a further twenty if ‘All’s
condition improved: in all a substantial sum of money. The
treatment prescribed was: ‘Pour over him the blood of a black
she-goat in a graveyard in the evening’ (hederem-leh be-wdz hew rot
men dar mekebret berk amgerab).14 This was done but the
treatment brought no cure. Some time later he was taken to a
soothsayer who chants under possession (d-irob). Such a soothsayer
makes the sick person sit in front of him and covers his head with a
cloth. When he is in a state of ecstasis he hits himself with a stick,
apparently without causing himself pain, and chants what seems to
the patient to be speech but which he does not understand. By the
sceptical these sounds are called ‘nonsense’ or ‘gibberish’. This man
prescribed a brown she-goat ('dferot) but its blood was no help.
He was then taken to a soothsayer who diagnoses by means of
measuring affected areas with the outspanned fingers of his hand
(d-idore’) so that he can determine where the jinn is situated. In all
cases in Dhofar a long-lasting illness in men or livestock is regarded as
possibly the result of witchcraft,1 5 or as involving possession by
unclean spirits. The secret of the treatment lies not alone in
slaughtering the she-goat allowing its blood to wash away the
sickness or to persuade a spirit to migrate to its body, but much
more in determining the attendant circumstances, the (usually
unblemished) colour of the animal, the place and time of the
slaughter. The frequent occurrence of graveyards as the scene for